Lap of Luxury - An RV Park

Ministry Update

The Lord gave us a wonderful time of ministry among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. I was able to preach, not only in the church, but the in tribal jail as well. It was amazing to me how relevant the Word of God was for every situation. As I preached one message, the pastor told of a woman there who claimed to be saved, but was not living for the Lord. When I read the Scripture of Titus 3:1-7, verse 3 read like a biographical sketch of this woman. She did not stay for the fellowship afterward the service, but left in a huff. I would rather see a negative response than no response at all.

Now we are back in the big city with cell phone service, and high speed internet. If you want to send us your pictures of how you were snowbound, now would be the time to do it. Thursday we head back east for a while. We will see some of you and we are looking forward to it.

Paul

Family Update

It has been an eventful weekend here in the Phoenix area. We pulled into Sun City, AZ on Thursday afternoon, and met the pastor at the hotel/RV park. Ahhh… an RV park, where they are set up to handle our kind of rig. No messing around with power boxes in the dark, uphill sewer connections, needle’s eye parking spaces – you know – the normal routine we go through at most churches. We had been looking forward to having some extra fellowship with the pastor and his wife (Ben & Stacy Schwanke) before the meeting started, but found out very soon after arriving that it would not work out. The pastor announced that they had been kicked out of their condo that very day and were living with his parents’ house about thirty minutes north of the city. By the way, it wasn’t because they didn’t pay their rent. Apparently there were some renovations that had to be done, and this was the only time the contractor could get to it. No problem – dinner at our trailer tomorrow, we said.

They arrived the next day, and we had a good time of fellowship and then the men went outside to grill some steaks. While I prepared the rest of the dinner, Paul took charge of the grilling. All was going well, until he noticed that the temperature inside the grill had gone from 300 degrees to 600 degrees in a very short time. Slightly curious, and perhaps suspicious, he lifted the lid. Flames shot out and singed all the hair on one side of his head, as well as his eyebrows and eyelashes. “Wow,” said Ben, never one to overstate matters. Fortunately, no one was hurt, although the grease fire did damage the steaks to some degree. The rest of the evening progressed uneventfully, for which we were all thankful.

Saturday began to look like a normal day. Laundry, household chores, and the kids playing outside were the big items on our list of things to do. Paul noticed that both entrances/exits to the hotel/RV park were cordoned off with yellow tape. Strange, he thought, that they would block off both exits at once. Whatever. Then the neighbors started packing up their motor homes and leaving en masse, some driving over the sidewalk to make their escape. The hotel was repaving the parking lot, as well as the entire RV lot. This entailed moving everyone at least once. The disgruntled seniors next to us decided that they would rather pack up and go to another park to unpack than pack up and move just a few hundred yards. The baton fell on us this morning as we were leaving for church. Could we move to space #46 sometime today? “Sure,” Paul said, “No problem.” We left for church, and after dinner with some of the church people, came back to the park. It only took a few minutes to get everything taken down, and we headed over to the designated space. Then, things began to go bad. Paul backed into the space while I waved my arms back and forth to direct him. The pad was very narrow, and when he pulled onto it, I quickly saw that we would not be able to open the living room slide without hitting the power box. Well, we can always pull back farther – no, the concrete wall would do considerable damage to the rear end of the trailer if we did that. Hmmm. Pull forward – no, now we are hanging out over the driveway. Paul made a trip up to the front desk to find out what was protocol in this situation. “Oh, just pull into the dirt,” they told him. Okaaay. We pulled into the dirt beside the pad and our clearance problems were over. Now we had leveling problems. Simple enough to fix – just a few minutes, and we were level.

I went in to put the kids down for their Sunday afternoon nap and discovered that Abigail had a world-class “blowout” diaper. While I cleaned up the carnage, Paul re-entered the trailer. “Don’t expect me to help you with anything for about ten minutes,” I told him. “Abigail really outdid herself on this one.” He responded with, “We’ve got bigger problems than a blowout.” This was not good. I thought. What is he talking about? “The front jacks aren’t responding at all. Zilch. Zip. Nada.” Ooooh, that is bad. He went back outside, and I finished my disgusting chore. After putting the kids into their beds, I went out to turn on the AC, as it was getting rather warm in the trailer. Poke, poke, poke, went the thermostat, but nothing happened. No lights, no sounds, no power. I went outside to share the glad tidings with my husband. “But the microwave was blinking,” he protested. I went back inside. Sure enough, the microwave was blinking, but still no power in the “nerve center” of the trailer. No lights in the front half of the trailer, and no electricity in the outlets. He decided to check the box. Much to our relief, the fault lay with the box, and not with our trailer. We reported this to the front desk, and asked if we could move to another spot. No, there are no other open spots. Unless you would like to move to #69, which has electricity, wireless internet, and water, but no sewer. Or #47, which has sewer and water, but no power. It has a great little brick patio, though. “Great,” I thought, “Does that come with an electric blanket, too?” No, but for your inconvenience, you get free breakfast every day of your stay in the hotel dining room. Doubtless, replete with foods that the children cannot have, but a great gesture on the park owner’s part. No worries, they said, you should be back to your original spot by Tuesday morning. I am beginning to get a taste of what the Israelites went through during the wilderness journey. Free breakfast, but a lot of moving around without getting anywhere.

After church tonight, we came home and Paul started working on the power problem. The kids thought it was great fun to have the one working light flickering on and off with a strobe effect. Esther was crying incessantly, and I was making the top bunk which had been flooded the night before by the inhabitant. Making an RV bunk is difficult under the best of circumstances, but it was not nearly that tonight. The lone flashlight beam flickered every once in a while, lending a double strobe effect to the task. Esther screeched. It was beginning to remind me of a low-budget horror movie. Thankfully, I didn’t fall off the swaying ladder. Then the process of getting the kids into their pajamas began. “Where’s your shirt? There it is! (lights go out, come back on) There it is again!”

Finally, after the children had been in bed for some time, the lights came on and stayed on – all of them! I cheered, softly, so as not to waken the sleeping baby in my arms. After messing with the box for quite a while, Paul realized that the RV next to ours was just parked in the space, and not plugged in, so he borrowed their power box, and we have heat, power, and sewer. Now if we just had some water…